The Drafter (23 page)

“Don't forget my luggage,” she said, and then, chin high, she strode toward the bathroom. One of the men by the main door was talking to himself in a whisper, and she fixed her gaze past him, pace never faltering. She couldn't resist a quick look back as she ducked under the tape cordoning off the bathroom. Silas was on a bench, slouched and feet spread wide as if waiting.

“Bathroom is closed,” a wiry man with dreadlocks and dark skin said as her boots clunked on the chipped tile. “Don't they teach you
how to read at that high school of yours? Get out. I'm not going to lose my job because you have to pee.”

“Squirrel?” she whispered, not liking how pale her face was in the mirror's reflection.

Immediately the late-thirties man sighed as he propped his mop up against the dented janitor cart. Hands on his hips, he made a show of looking her up and down. His eyes were scary-bright, and she didn't like how they lingered on her black eye. “You're smaller than I thought you'd be,” he said, his accent marking him as from the South, maybe Louisiana.

“Uh, sorry?” she fumbled, not liking that the janitor cart was stained from chemicals and covered with torn stickers. She liked it even less when he opened up an old toolbox, but was reassured when she saw packets of clean bandages and doctor stuff. Peri came closer. His hands were scrubbed to a soft pink, and they were smooth, not the hands of a janitor. The door was open, but Silas would let them know if someone was going to come in.

“You work for the alliance,” she said, alarmed when he lifted a panel and brought out a wand. “How do I know you're not chipping me?”

Expression wry, he handed her a hand mirror. “You can watch. Stand still. Arms out.”

She put her coat down, noticing that he'd dried the sinks when she draped it over one. “What is that?” she asked when he ran the wand over her.

“It's a chip finder from my office,” he said, and she almost turned until he grunted at her to stand still. “I'm a vet in my other life.”

Peri frowned as he wanded her back. “Opti doesn't chip their personnel like
dogs
.”

“Uh-huh,” the man said, and the wand beeped.

No
. Shocked, she pulled the hand mirror up, turning her back to the row of mirrors. Her heart pounded, and the ugly feeling of betrayal slid through her. It was high up on her shoulder, where she'd had a mole removed four years ago. They'd chipped her.

“Well, at least it's not in your ass. Can you slip your sweater down a little?”

She spun, horrified, and he ducked his head, smiling. “I know what I'm doing,” he said as he put the wand away and snapped on a pair of purple gloves. “I've got a license to practice medicine. It's the vet degree that's fake. It's easier to get regulated meds as a vet. You can watch. That's why I gave you the mirror.”

Feeling the urgency to her core, she slipped her sweater farther down her shoulder. The mirror shook in her grip, and she used both hands. She'd been chipped, and that bothered her more than anything she'd learned in the last day.

White-faced, she stared at her reflection. His hands were warm on her back, his pressure firm as he palpated the skin. She saw it in his eyes when he found it, his gaze meeting hers through the reflection past his swinging dreadlocks. “You've done this before?” she asked when he took a scalpel from its wrapper.

“Unfortunately, yes.” Brow furrowed, he touched her back again, swabbing it down to make a cold spot. “Sorry, but there isn't time to numb it.”

She nodded, and then her breath caught as he cut. Her stomach clenched, and she watched the blood flow. The pain was tolerable even as he pressed on it.

“Tell me if you get woozy,” he said. “It's not a big cut, but people are funny. Lots of pressure now.”

Her teeth clenched as he pushed as if trying to get a sliver out. The hand mirror shook when something white and red slid out of her, the size of a grain of rice. Moving fast, he grasped it with a wad of gauze. “Here,” he said, extending it to her. “You going to pass out?”

“No.” Her shoulder throbbed, then burned as he cleansed it. The gauze was in her grip, the stark red and white riveting.

“You okay?”

His voice was kind. Peri set the gauze on the shelf under the mirror to tug her sweater back into place. The tape over it made a bump, alien and reminding her of what they'd done. Bill had
chipped
her. “I'm fine,” she said, but inside she was reeling, not from the cut or the blood, but in the realization that if Silas had been right about this, maybe he was right about everything else.

“We'll send them on a chase,” the man said as he collected his things. “All part of the service. Liz will be here in a second, so don't hit her, okay? You might pull your tape off.”

Pulse fast, she leaned against the sink. Her world was coming apart, and there was no one to catch her.
How did this happen?
The chip sat on the shelf, and she checked her phone. Five minutes. It seemed longer, and she gathered her coat to leave, the need to run strong.

“Whoa, hold on,” the man said as she headed for the door. “Wait until Liz gets here. How long since you've eaten?”

Liz? Bet that's not her real name, either
. “Just a few minutes ago.”

“Mall food,” he said in disgust. “Did you sleep last night?”

“On the bus,” she said as a dark-haired woman wearing a bright blue nylon coat walked in. Her eyes were exaggerated with swirls of soot to confuse the facial recognition software, and Peri's brow furrowed. It would be hard to match that with what Squirrel had in his cart.

“Hi, Squirrel,” the woman said brightly, her expression souring when she saw Peri. “You'd better be worth it,” she said as she belligerently handed Peri a stick of body paint.

“That's enough,” the man said sharply, and Peri clicked the soot stick open, leaning into the mirror to apply it. “If you don't want to help, you shouldn't have come.”

“Oh, I'll help, but I'm doing this for Silas, not her.” The woman shrugged out of her blue coat and handed it to Peri when she straightened, looking for approval. “I owe him.”

But the approval never came, and Peri stiffened when the woman snatched up Peri's new coat with an appreciative sound. “If you hurt Silas, I'll be all over you like a rabid dog,” Liz said, settling into Peri's coat with a smile. “Oh, this is nice. If they catch you, I'm keeping it.”

“I saved his life once,” Peri said. “I'll do it again.”
Am I really that short?
she wondered as she slipped the soot stick into a pocket to keep, but their heights were nearly identical.

“Yeah, from a dart he got protecting you. Walk for me. Didn't you have a hat?”

“I threw it away.” Seeing her logic, Peri paced before the sinks.

“I think I'll leave out the pained hunch,” Liz said drily. “Where's the chip?”

Squirrel had put it in a tiny specimen bag, bloody gauze and all, and taking it, the small woman dropped it into a pocket. “Put on my hat and coat and go,” she said, pointing to the door. “They're getting antsy. Don't look at Silas when you leave. You think you can do that?”

Liz snorted when the doctor helped her into the blue coat, and Peri's jaw clenched as she put on the rough, knitted blue-and-white stocking cap, thinking the pompom tassel ridiculous. “Thank you,” Peri said when Squirrel adjusted the nylon monstrosity about her.

“Don't thank us,” he said, smiling wryly. “We're trying to close you down.”

Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Peri didn't know anymore. Pace slow, she held her head up so she wouldn't look as if she was hurting.

But she was. She'd never felt so alone.

“What do you think?” Peri heard Liz say as she hesitated at the door by the
CLOSED
banner, out of their sight and not yet in the hallway.

“I think you need to lighten up,” the man said. “And I think that Silas needs to get over it and do his job.”

“His job?” Liz scoffed. “What do you expect? He hates drafters.”

“He does not hate drafters,” came Squirrel's quick, angry answer. “That woman is half starved and emotionally ready to crack, and much of it's his fault. He knows the barriers to self-sufficiency that Opti instills in their drafters, and him trying to force her to break them when she has no resources isn't helping anyone, least of all her. He has a job to do, and if he doesn't start doing it, we're going to lose everything, Peri included.”

Her back against the wall, Peri froze, caught between two worlds on the threshold of a scummy bathroom, Opti on one side, the alliance on the other, both of them lying to her. Instilled barriers to self-sufficiency? Was he saying she'd been conditioned to think she needed someone else to survive? It was undeniable that she was used to being part of a team, but that didn't mean she couldn't function alone!

But then she thought of Silas's giving her money, buying her food, his room where she'd recuperated. Even worse, the possible MEP that lurked after every traumatic draft if she didn't have someone to fill in the holes. Heart pounding, she gripped her borrowed nylon coat close about her. If Opti was here, she'd never get into that upstairs office. She had to know what had happened that night, not look at a cleaned-up crime scene. She had to find the button she'd seen in her memory of Jack. It was a talisman, and it held a memory. It held the truth.

“This is our best shot in five years at bringing Opti down, and he's blowing it because he doesn't want to buy her dinner?” the man said, and Peri felt the blood rush to her face. “That's a load. Tell Silas to suck it up and do his job. He can do this for the week it's going to take.”

Angry, Peri pulled the
CLOSED
banner down, letting it fall to the floor as she left. Head high, she strode quickly into the mall, ignoring everything and everyone. She didn't see Silas as she passed the Opti personnel more intent on a vid screen and chip than what was in front of their faces. It was a mistake they wouldn't make twice.

Her hand was in a fist, hiding the words that would bring them together in case she forgot. She wasn't going to the dealership.

She was going home.

S
ilas reclined against the hard mall bench, his long legs stretched out and his ankles crossed as he waited for Peri. His head was thrown back, and his hat covered most of his face, allowing him to watch the restroom and front entry without looking obvious about it. It had been only a few minutes, but they all felt like hours.

Fidgeting, he pulled himself out of his slouch when he saw Liz mince into the bathroom. The three suits pretending to catch a smoke in the vestibule began discussing their options, and his eyes flicked to the arcade, drawn by a burst of realistic gunplay.
Hurry up, Howard
, he thought, twitching his coat tighter about his shoulders. It might take his old friend longer to get Peri to trust him than for him to take the chip out. Trust was going to make or break everything, and everything was screaming for him to move and move fast.

Fran had called him while Peri was shopping, tracking him down through his request for Howard, the alliance's cleaner. The shortsighted woman had told him to cut Peri loose so Opti could pick her up, scrub her down, and start the game again. But the information was there in Peri's head. All he had to do was convince Peri to let him see it. Fran had given him one more chance, but if this failed, it was done, and Silas's worry deepened as more agents gathered in ones and twos, pulled in from the outskirts. They were getting ready for a push. Time was up.

“Thank God,” he whispered when he spotted Peri from the corner of his eye. She was almost unrecognizable in that blue nylon coat and Liz's white-and-blue-striped knit hat pulled down over her head. She looked smaller, more vulnerable, in the more casual clothes. He could tell she was shaken; every ounce of her usual confidence was gone. The grace, though, remained, and he wondered what might have happened if she had never fallen from that playground swing and had become the dancer she had intended.

But she is a dancer
, he reminded himself. She danced with death, and if she didn't keep up, the bastard would win.

Breath held, he watched the men at the door ignore her, focused on a tablet and presumably the tracker. She gave them a backward sniff as she passed them, pushing open the glass doors—and was gone.

Bold as brass
, he thought in relief and checked his watch. He and Liz would lead them through the mall and out the south entrance to leave the tracker on a bus before doubling back. Peri would probably be test-driving the latest model from Detroit. The woman did like her cars.

Not so fast
, he thought, standing when he saw Liz striding through the food court. Peri never walked that quickly even when she was late, firm in the conviction that if you were important enough, they'd wait. Liz's arms swung too far, her hips swaying not quite enough. The coat Peri had bought hung on her a bit loose; her shoulders weren't wide enough to carry off the high fashion. The grace Peri held was missing, but no one else seemed to notice. Every single Opti agent was focused on her, and his pulse quickened as he swung Peri's roller bag around as she approached.

“My God,” Liz said as she halted before him, beaming up at him in excitement. “The woman is a nightmare.”

Silas's jaw clenched.
True
. “She's complicated,” he said, hand on her shoulder to point her in the direction of the south entrance.

Liz flicked a glance behind them, disguising it with a tug to her new coat. “Yeah? You like paranoid, sarcastic basket cases who can kill a man with a ballpoint pen?”

“I like you, don't I? South entrance is our best bet.”